


Substance in Memory and Art

by Moon Faery (tsukinofaerii)



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-19
Updated: 2010-03-19
Packaged: 2017-10-08 03:29:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/72237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsukinofaerii/pseuds/Moon%20Faery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A memory is better than nothing at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Substance in Memory and Art

The red crayon slides smoothly over empty paper, filling in substance where before there was less than nothing. Sometimes Naminé feels like the paper, so bare of everything that a hard breath might tear her apart. Drawing helps; every picture is another part of herself, put down where no one else can destroy it. She keeps them in a box under her bed, or pinned on the walls where sometimes they help her remember that she is not but still _is_. Every day she tells herself that she'll burn them all up and maybe end herself in the process, but she never does. She couldn't fear death even if she knew that she should, but the threat of being completely forgotten stops her better than mere fear ever could. Some part of her screams against being less than nothing, not even a memory to the one that matters. Memories have a life of a sort, and she wants at least that. Anything less is unthinkable.

It makes what she's doing to Sora so much harder, turning him into the thing that could break her. She knows that it's right, that Sora will be better for it, but to strip him of everything and paste the pieces together like a collage feels _wrong_. The new picture will never be the same as the old, no matter how carefully she lines up the edges and fills in the missing lines. Still, _like_ the old is the best she can do, and for Sora she'll do it.

For Sora, she would do anything. She would even erase herself, but instead she erases him and thinks it's almost enough.

It's not the same thing that made her draw Roxas and Axel in a thousand different ways, or that splashes colors of memory behind her eyelids just beyond where she can see them. Sora has a heart big enough to hold the all the worlds, even the places he's barely set foot on. Things live inside him that make her feel almost alive when they come to live under her hands. He is hope and despair and love to fill every bit of darkness and light and not change _any_ of it because it's too precious to change. The people in his heart are so strong, so clear that they shine with colors no eye can see. She wants to capture that, to be it, with an ache that has her throat closing even as she fills in the clear blue of a sky and a golden sun shining down. It's the only thing she's ever felt, but she's felt it since first setting her eyes on him. She wonders if it's how other Nobodies feel when they think about their Others, and then wonders why she, the nobody of Nobodies, should feel that way about Sora.

Three figures sit on sand before her, flat and lifeless on paper but vivid in every way that matters. In Sora's memory they glow with emotion, heartbreak and love and a confusion so strong he doesn't even think about it any more. _She_ is on the sand too, but only barely. She's a darkness in the sand, a place where two shadows meet and merge and make something new from the two of them. No one but her would know to look for it, but its there and it helps as she sketches Sora ever farther away from her. It's the most she'll let herself do, knowing that if she makes it more than a glimpse Sora might never come back together.

One of the people in the picture is Sora, of course. He's all she draws anymore, the subject of every picture, every half-scribbled link of hazy memory and color. One of the others is a girl, with red hair and eyes more purple than blue. _Kairi_. Sora's memories of her are scrambled, mixed and tainted because she's already done so much to them, but it doesn't stop them from being so saturated with emotion that she can almost feel the friendship, the love. Kairi is all bright giggles and clean skin when Sora was always just a _little_ grubby from playing. She's fire and songs and everything a Princess should be to her hero except the thing even Sora suspected she wants most, the thing Sora can't and never will accept from her. Kairi causes almost the same pull as Sora, but it doesn't ache so bitterly as to stop her breath. Even Roxas hurts more, and the pain from him is a summer breeze compared to the whirlwind of his Other. She suspects that Kairi is hers, with her heat that Naminé's coldness can't touch but still somehow belongs to. But she also knows that there's more to the work, and that even her Other won't complete her entirely. It might be her only choice though, and she keeps it for itself and nothing else. As with Sora, a partial completion is better than being an eternally blank sheet that even other Nobodies pity.

The other figure is one she knows outside of Sora, sitting just on his other side and almost as much of a shadow as she is. Riku, the other keyblade master and the part of Sora's memories so deep that he's the only one who can never forget him no matter what she does. Riku is in everything she draws with Sora somehow, even when she deliberately tries not to. He finds a place in waves and cloud, in shadow and light. No matter what the picture or what Sora does in it, Riku is there in one form or another. Even Sora doesn't know how much the other boy is a part of him. She uses a freshly sharpened crayon to draw Riku's heart in, a delicate thing so well hidden that sometimes it seems like it's not there at all. It's sometimes dark, definitely bruised, but around Sora it _shines_. Looking at Sora's memories of Riku, she can almost predict their future, and it makes her smile for them. A quick flash of red makes the threads, connecting ties that had been almost severed by guilt and jealousy.

When she finishes the picture, she lays her materials aside to let the memory sink in. There's so much there that her eye doesn't know where to go, but memories are like that. They're never simple, sometimes not even clear. She uses watercolor for those, extra thin and easily blurred without losing the moment entirely. Her work with Sora is almost done, and she doesn't know what she'll do after, though she thinks she might. The promise of an end better than being forgotten beckons, and she knows that no matter how it ends she'll see it through, if only as a memory.

And a memory, fragile and broken as they can be, is better than nothing at all.


End file.
